The Land of Opportunity.(Argentinian immigrants settle in Spanish villages)

The El Maestrazgo mountain region in Aragon is one of Spain's most desolate and underpopulated areas. There, in the tiny village of Aguaviva, Marcelo Martinez and Gilda Mazzeo, 35-year-old transplants from Buenos Aires, have been learning to embrace the austere rhythms and dust-filled topography of their adopted home. "It's not as isolated as it looks," says Martinez, pointing out that the nearest town is "only" 30 minutes away. Mazzeo seems less convinced. But even she chokes with emotion as she recalls how kindly her children were treated when the family first arrived. "They gave us food, clothes, bicycles, everything."

For the past two and a half years, Aguaviva has been at the center of a little-known plan to repopulate Spain's remote villages with families from Latin America. Settlers are lured with prepaid flights, jobs and housing--a ticket out of the grinding poverty that has plagued much of their continent. Luis Bricio, Aguaviva's mayor and founder of the Association of Spanish Towns Against Depopulation, describes his venture as a last-ditch effort to save places that would otherwise "disappear." Since the 1950s, plummeting birthrates and migration to cities have left Spain with more than 2,000 ghost towns. Many more villages are populated only by handfuls of people in their 80s.

Enter Argentina, a country in economic turmoil, struggling with an unemployment rate of 25 percent. In opinion polls, one third of its citizens have said they would leave if they could. Already, ...